minable and unpardonable to show a gospel to any gentile. This is so true, that you cannot find the word gospel in any profane author whatever. lieve it? ought we at all the less to submit to it? GOVERNMENT. SECTION 1. THE pleasure of governing must cer tainly be exquisite, if we may judge from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned in it. We have many more books on government than there are monarchs in the world. Heaven preserve me from making any attempt here to give instruction to kings and their noble ministers-their valets, confessors, or fi The rigid Socinians, influenced by the above-mentioned or other difficulties, do not consider our four divine gospels in any other light than as works of clandestine introduction, fabricated about a century after the time of Jesus Christ, and carefully concealed from the gentiles for another century beyond that; works, as they express it, of a coarse and vulgar character, written by coarse and vulgar men, who for a long time confined their discourses and appeals to the mere po-nanciers. I understand nothing about pulace of their party. We will not here repeat the blasphemies uttered by them. This sect, although considerably diffused and numerous, is at present as much concealed as were the first gospels. The difficulty of converting them is so much the greater, in consequence of their obstinately refusing to listen to anything but mere reason. The other Christians contend against them only with the weapons of the holy scripture: it is consequently impossible that, being thus always in hostility with respect to principles, they should ever unite in their conclu sions. With respect to ourselves, let us ever remain inviolably attached to our four gospels, in union with the infallible church. Let us reject the five gospels which it has rejected; let us not enquire why our Lord Jesus Christ permitted five false gospels, five false histories of his life to be written; and let us submit to our spiritual pastors and directors, who alone on earth are enlightened by the Holy Spirit. the matter; I have the profoundest respect and reverence for them all. It belongs only to Mr. Wilkes, with his English balance, to weigh the merits of those who are at the head of the human race. It would, besides, be exceedingly strange if, with three or four thousand volumes on the subject of government, with Machiavel, and Bossuet's "Policy of the Holy Scripture," with the "Ge neral Financier," the "Guide to Fi nances," the "Means of Enriching a State," &c. there could possibly be a single person living who was not perfectly acquainted with the duties of kings and the science of government. Professor Puffendorf, or, as perhaps we should rather say, Baron Puffendorf, says that King David, having sworn never to attempt the life of Shimei, his privy counsellor, did not violate his oath when, according to the Jewish history, he instructed his son Solomon to get him assassinated, "because David had only engaged that he himself would not kill Shimei." The baron, who rebukes so sharply the mental reservations of the Jesuits, allows David, in the present instance, to entertain one which would not be particularly palatable to privy counsellors. Into what a gross error did Abbadie fall when he considered as authentic the letters so ridiculously forged from Pilate to Tiberius, and the pretended proposal of Tiberius to place Jesus Christ in the number of the gods. If Abbadie is a Let us consider the words of Bossuet bad critic and a contemptible reasoner, in his "Policy of the Holy Scripture," is the church on that account less en-addressed to Monseigneur the Dauphin. lightened? are we the less bound to be- "Thus we see royalty established accord ing to the order of succession in the house of David and Solomon, and the throne of David is secured for ever, (although, by the way, that same little joint-stool called a throne,' instead of being secured for ever, lasted, in fact, only a very short time.)" By virtue of this law, the eldest son was to succeed to the exclusion of his brothers, and on this account Adonijah, who was the eldest, said to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, "Thou knowest that the kingdom was mine, and all Israel had recognised my right; but the Lord hath transferred the kingdom to my brother Solomon." The right of Adonijah was incontestible. Bossuet expressly admits this at the close of this article. "The Lord has transferred" is only a usual phrase, which means, I have lost my property or right, I have been deprived of my right. Adonijah was the issue of a lawful wife; the birth of his younger brother was the fruit of a double crime. is difficult to perceive in this a particularly salutary "right of nations," and a government eminently favourable to liberty of thought and social happiness. There are geometrical figures exceedingly regular and complete in their kind; arithmetic is perfect; many trades or manufactures are carried on in a manner constantly uniform and excellent; but with respect to the government of men, is it possible for any one to be good, when all are founded on passions in conflict with each other? No convent of monks ever existed without discord; it is impossible, therefore, to exclude it from kingdoms. Every government resembles not merely a monastic institution, but a private household. There are none existing without quarrels ; and quarrels between one people and another, between one prince and another, have ever been sanguinary; those between subjects and their sovereigns have been sometimes no less destructive. How is an individual to act? Must he risk joining in the conflict, or withdraw from the scene of action? SECTION II. More than one people are desirous of new constitutions. The English would have no objection to a change of ministers once in every eight hours, but they have no wish to change the form of their government. "Unless, then," says Bossuet, "something extraordinary occurred, the eldest was to succeed." But the something extraordinary, in the present instance, which prevented it was, that Solomon, the issue of a marriage arising out of a double adultery and a murder, procured the assassination, at the foot of the altar, of his elder brother and his lawful king, whose rights were supported by the high priest Abiathar and the chief commander Joab. After this we must acknowledge, The modern Romans are proud of their that it is more difficult than some seem church of St. Peter and their ancient to imagine to take lessons on the rights of { Greek statues; but the people would be persons, and on the true system of go- glad to be better fed, although they were vernment from the holy scriptures, which not quite so rich in benedictions; the fawere first given to the Jews, and after-thers of families would be content that wards to ourselves, for purposes of a far higher nature. "The preservation of the people is the supreme law." Such is the fundamental maxim of nations; but in all civil wars the safety of the people is made to consist in slaughtering a number of the citizens. { In all foreign wars, the safety of a people consists in killing their neighbours, and taking possession of their property! It the church should have less gold, if the granaries had more corn; they regret the time when the apostles journied on foot, and when the citizens of Rome travelled from one palace to another in a litter. We are incessantly reminded of the admirable republics of Greece. There is no question that the Greeks would prefer the government of a Pericles and a Demosthenes to that of a pacha; but in their against foreigners from the well-founded apprehension of a dreadful revolution. China actually experienced such a re race, half Mantchou and half Hun. India obeys Mogul Tartars. The Nile, the Orontes, Greece, and Epirus are still under the yoke of the Turks. It is not most prosperous and palmy times they were always complaining; discord and hatred prevailed between all the cities without, and in every separate city with-volution; she obeys Tartars of a mixed in. They gave laws to the old Romans, who before that time had none; but their own were so bad for themselves that they were continually changing them. What could be said in favour of a go-an English race that reigns in England; vernment under which the just Aristides it is a German family which succeeded to was banished, Phocion put to death, So- a Dutch prince, as the latter succeeded crates condemned to drink hemlock after a Scotch family which had succeeded having been exposed to banter and derision an Angevin family, that had replaced a on the stage by Aristophanes; and under Norman family, which had expelled a which the Amphyctions, with contempti-family of usurping Saxons. Spain obeys ble imbecility, actually delivered up Greece into the power of Philip, because the Phocians had ploughed up a field which was part of the territory of Apollo? But the government of the neighbouring monarchies was worse. Puffendorf promises us a discussion on the best form of government. He tells us, "that many pronounce in favour of monarchy, and others, on the contrary, inveigh furiously against kings; and that it does not fall within the limits of his subject to examine in detail the reasons of the latter." If any mischievous and malicious reader expects to be told here more than he is told by Puffendorf, he will be much deceived. a French family; which succeeded to an Austrasian race, that Austrasian race had succeeded families that boasted of Visigoth extraction; these Visigoths had been long driven out by the Arabs, after having succeeded to the Romans who had expelled the Carthaginians. Gaul obeys Franks, after having obeyed Roman prefects. The same banks of the Danube have belonged to Germans, Romans, Arabs, Sclavonians, Bulgarians, and Huns, to twenty different families, and almost all foreigners. And what greater wonder has Rome had to exhibit than so many emperors who were born in the barbarous provinces, and so many popes born in provinces no less barbarous? Let him govern who can. And when any one has succeeded SECTION III. A Swiss, a Hollander, a Venetian nobleman, an English peer, a cardinal, and a count of the empire, were once disput-in his attempts to become master, he going, on a journey, about the nature of verns as he can. their respective governments, and which of them deserved the preference: no one knew much about the matter; each remained in his own opinion without having any very distinct idea what that opinion was; and they returned without having come to any general conclusion; every one praising his own country from vanity, and complaining of it from feeling. What, then, is the destiny of mankind? scarcely any great nation is governed by itself. Begin from the east, and take the circuit of the world. Japan closed its ports In 1769, a traveller delivered the following narrative:-" I saw, in the course of my journey, a large and populous country, in which all offices and places were purchaseable; I do not mean clandestinely, and in evasion of the law, but publicly, and in conformity to it. The right to judge, in the last resort, of the honour, property, and life of the citizen, was put to auction in the same manner as the right and property in a few acres of land. Some very high commissions in enquire the reason of this, but obtain no "Fortunes in this country are not made by agriculture, but are derived from a certain game of chance, in great practice there, in which the parties sign their names, and transfer them from hand to "On one particular occasion, while hand. If they lose, they withdraw into changing horses, finding myself somewhat the mud and mire of their original extrac-fatigued, I requested the post-master to tion; if they win, they share in the administration of public affairs, they marry their daughters to mandarins, and their sons become a species of mandarins also. "A considerable number of the citizens have their whole means of subsistence assigned upon a house, which possesses in fact nothing, and a hundred persons have bought for a hundred thousand crowns each the right of receiving and paying the money due to these citizens upon their assignments on this imaginary hotel; rights which they never exercise, as they in reality know nothing at all of what is thus supposed to pass through their hands. favour me with a glass of wine. I cannot let you have it,' says he; the superintendants of thirst, who are very con{siderable in number, and all of them remarkably sober, would accuse me of drinking to excess, which would absolutely be my ruin.' 'But drinking a single glass of wine,' I replied, to repair a man's strength, is not drinking to excess; and what difference can it make whether that single glass of wine is taken by you or { me?' At "Sir,' replied the man, our laws relating to thirst are much more excellent than you appear to think them. After our vintage is finished, physicians are ap"Sometimes a proposal is made and pointed by the regular authorities to visit cried about the streets, that all who have our cellars. They set aside a certain a little money in their chest should ex- quantity of wine, such as they judge we change it for a slip of exquisitely manu- may drink consistently with health. factured paper, which will free you from the end of the year they return; and if all pecuniary care, and enable you to pass they conceive that we have exceeded their through life with ease and comfort. On restriction by a single bottle, they punish the morrow an order is published, com- us with very severe fines; and if we make pelling you to change this paper for an- the slightest resistence, we are sent to other, much better. On the following Toulon to drink salt-water. Were I to day you are deafened with the cry of a give you the wine you ask, I should most new paper, cancelling the two former certainly be charged with excessive drinkones. You are ruined! But long headsing. You must see to what danger I console you with the assurance, that within should be exposed from the supervisors of a fortnight the newsmen will cry up some our health.' proposal more engaging. "You travel into one province of this empire, and purchase articles of food, drink, clothing, and lodging. If you go into another province, you are obliged to pay duties upon all those commodities, as if you had just arrived from Africa. You "I could not refrain from astonishment at the existence of such a system; but my astonishment was no less on meeting with a disconsolate and mortified pleader, who informed me that he had just then lost, a little beyond the nearest rivulet, a cause precisely similar to one he had gained on this side of it. I understood having eaten flesh in Lent? He shook his head in the negative. Would you prefer the times of the civil wars, which began at the death of Francis II.; or the times of the defeats of St. Quintin and Pavia; or the long disorders attending the wars against the English; or the feudal anarchy; or the horrors of the second race of kings, or the barbarity of the first? At every successive question, he appeared "I happened to be still in this same to shudder more violently. The governcountry when it became involved in a war ment of the Romans seemed to him the with some of its neighbours. This war most intolerable of all. Nothing can be was nicknamed 'The Ridicule,' because worse,' he said, 'than to be under foreign there was much to be lost and nothing to masters.' At last we came to the Druids. be gained by it. I went upon my travels Ah!' he exclaimed, 'I was quite miselsewhere, and did not return till the con- taken: it is still worse to be governed clusion of peace, when the nation seemed by sanguinary priests.' He admitted, at to be in the most dreadful state of misery: last, although with sore reluctance, that it had lost its money, its soldiers, its the time he lived in was, all things confleets, and its commerce. I said to my-sidered, the least intolerable and hateself, its last hour is come; everything, ful." alas! must pass away. Here is a nation absolutely annihilated. What a dreadful SECTION IV. pity for a great part of the people were An eagle governed the birds of the amiable, industrious, and gay, after hav-whole country of Ornithia. He had no ing been formerly coarse, superstitious, { other right, it must be allowed, than what and barbarous. he derived from his beak and claws; however, after providing liberally for his own repasts and pleasures, he governed as well as any other bird of prey. "I was perfectly astonished, at the end of only two years, to find its capital and principal cities more opulent than ever. Luxury had increased, and an air of en- In his old age he was invaded by a joyment prevailed everywhere. I could flock of hungry vultures, who rushed from not comprehend this prodigy; and it was the depths of the north to scatter fear and only after I had examined into the go- desolation through his provinces. There vernment of the neighbouring nations that appeared, just about this time, a certain I could discover the cause of what ap- owl, who was born in one of the most peared so unaccountable. I found that scrubby thickets of the empire, and who the government of all the rest was just as had long been known under the name of bad as that of this nation, and that this luci-fugax, or light-hater. He possessed nation was superior to all the rest in in- much cunning, and associated only with dustry. bats; and, while the vultures were en"A provincial of the country I am gaged in conflict with the eagle, our polispeaking of was once bitterly complain-tic owl and his party entered with great ing to me of all the grievances which he laboured under. He was well acquainted with history. I asked him if he thought he should have been happier had he lived a hundred years before, when his country was in a comparative state of barbarism, and a citizen was liable to be hanged for adroitness, in the character of pacificators, on that department of the air which was disputed by the combatants. The eagle and vultures, after a war of long duration, at last actually referred the cause of contention to the owl, who, with his solemn and imposing physiog |